Long overdue update.

Been a hectic couple of days, have just been focusing on the mime-animation and cleaning curves. The animation is now moved into spline-mode and I've been working on the clean up pass + detail since the last post.
It's moving slowly, but it's getting there. I never rush when I polish, since this is my last chance to spot any glitches and too smooth out the motion to get it to look as good as possible. So far Maya has been good to me and I haven't had too many issues. I did "lose" half a day though, but this was mainly because the spline-modes in Maya differs from the ones I'm used to in Max. Maya has a couple more than Max so I had to sit down and try and read up on which kind of splines I should use for my animation. After looking through the meaning of the different spline-modes in Maya (read about them in "How to cheat in Maya 2010" by: Eric Luhta), I found out that Maya 2012 which I'm using has a new feature called auto-tangents which basically is the same tangents as I'm used to from 3dsMax. The only difference is that the handles on the tangents are locked in Maya, which means I have to unlock them manually to adjust the curve. I must admit this is a time-consuming process and it tends to create some nasty overshoots. I already know that the polish for this task won't be as good as I want it to be since I'm still learning the software and trying to become familiar with a new way of polishing, but I am learning more and more as I work so hopefully I'm improving as I go.

So far I have gone through the first 400 frames, still working in bits at a time so this playblast isn't the finished 400 frames since fingers and some detail still haven't been sorted out. But the main controllers are pretty much done:



Tomorrow is another show and tell so I might be showing this playblast there, not that much point since I'm way passed the "feedback-window", but I might get some suggestions for detail.
I have been working hard to get as much done as possible before the voice-actor comes in on Wednesday, but I won't have a polished animation by then. But so far the linear and spline version does not differ to much time-wise so a half splined version should be okay.

Tomorrow is pretty much dedicated to finishing the idea for the 11 second club, since we are doing a reference shoot on that on the same day as the voice-recordings. I have not done as much on that as I wanted to so I need to dedicate tomorrow to getting my idea down on paper and solving the issues I'm having with the story.
The idea at the moment has changed after a chat with Siobhan so instead of having the Edna returning a cake I am thinking of her as a judge in a baking-contest that Mrs. Crowley is competing in. I also have a deeper and more emotional story I want to work on, but I think I will talk to Siobhan about that tomorrow to hopefully help me chose which one to go for. It's important that it makes sense and that the idea is clear and at the moment both of these are a bit weak.
- But that's tomorrow, good night!

Feedback on 11' idea and more work on the mime

So got feedback on my idea for the 11second club clip, the class & Siobhan seemed to like the idea, the only concern was that it might not be as clear as I thought it was. So I need to figure out a way to show that the old lady is giving the cake back to mrs. Crowley, because at the moment that is not obvious to the audience.
Will work more on that later on, but at the moment my main focus is on finishing the mime-piece.
I continued working on the transition I changed today, found some glitches that I had overlooked yesterday. Fresh eyes always helps!
After that I continued animating fingers, the important bit here was making everything flow. Fingers are an important part of this piece, because it's one of the most important tools mimes use in their acts to give the illusion of objects.

I think the fingers are working pretty good, but asked Em for some feedback on it just in case. Got a suggestion to some more movement where he is listening to the director so I'll give that a try. Otherwise it seemed like it was working.

Here's how the piece looks at the moment:



Everything is still linear. The next thing I need to do is the facial-expressions and eyes & blinks.

An idea for the 11 second club competition

So far I'm sort of stuck on an elderly woman because of the voice in the clip, but the scenarios can change. I have worked out a couple to share with the class tomorrow, but I drew down my favourite idea so far and will bring the image with me to class tomorrow.



I like this one because the characters have contrast and Edna the woman talking is a professional in her field (food) since she is a quite a heavy lady, while Mrs. Crowley is a skinny character which makes her less successful on the kitchen in Edna's eyes.

Feedback changes to the animation

Today's showing of work in progress in class was quite successful. It seemed to be working and that they understood what was happening so I'm happy with that.
The only suggestion to changes I got was the big anticipation before the "ta-da" pose, it didn't make sense that he did the rope, got pulled and all of a sudden did a turn before the big swing.

I must say I felt that was a weak part and my worries was proven right by the feedback from the class and Siobhan.
So when I got home I started working on the new transition. And man oh man, what a struggle that was. I think it was mostly because I'm still a bit unfamiliar with Maya, but it took ages and I ended up "rebuilding" nearly a 100 frames of animation to make it fit. Luckily we have got a week extension for the module, so I should be okay with time even though all of today was spent on fixing this transition.

This is how it ended up looking after today's work:



I then sent it to Scott, who pointed out that the long pause didn't make sense. I had pictured facial expressions and some time for him to "pick himself up", but decided to give Scott's suggestion a go. (He suggested that I made him go into the ta-da immediately)

Here's how that looks:



I must say I think it both feels more natural and looks better this way. And I think it might be easier to see Alfonso does the big ta-da pose, but still is a bit unsure if what he has done is indeed the right thing.

Now that I have sorted that out I need to move on and start thinking of ideas for the 11 second club clip. We are having a session on that in class tomorrow so need to have some ideas to share with the rest.

Another web-cast with Jeff Gabor

Another great web-cast with Jeff Gabor, in this one he shares some of the tips and tricks on appeal in character that he picked up when he worked on Bluesky's animated feature "Horton Hears a Who!".



Thanks for sharing the link, Scott!

Playblast notes

So after viewing my playblast on loop for a good 10 minutes, both normal and flipped.
Took notes while I watched it. I think I have found the most important glitches, "hiccups" and other mistakes that I need to sort out.

I found most of them by viewing it "normally", but when I flipped it I found even more. Both happy and a bit annoyed at the same time because of this. Feel I have enough work already.. Hehe.
But it really helps to flip the video, it feels almost like your viewing it for the first time again and I guess that is why I spotted some mistakes that I had overlooked before. Useful and very easy way to hopefully improve the piece a bit.

Here's the playblast flipped too better explain what I just described:



I also got some feedback from Scott yesterday on where he moves his hand behind his back, it looked "weird" as he put it, and he suggested to change it or make it faster. I went for the last one since I like the way he "presents the ball" in the end. But it looked a lot more natural when I made the move faster, so thanks Scott for pointing that out.
Think the problem was that you could see his hand between his legs in a few frames which made it look like a animation-glitch.

What I found by viewing the playblast was:
- The nods and wave needs to be a bit quicker and "softer".
- There are also some moments where one of the arms are completely still, which I need to have a look at whilst avoiding "floaty-ness" in the progess.
- There are some issues to work out on knees, some arrupt movements, but not too much popping this time around. So happy with that.
-Also need to work a bit on the transition from; Rope-pull -> holding his neck -> back to the rope again. There are some hiccups which causes it to stutter a bit here, so I need to see if there are any really sudden stops in the curves or if it's just a bit to fast which causes the curve-value to change too quickly.

So, a lot of work left. And I still haven't started on the details.. I think it's going to be a busy day, I'm starting to feel the time pressure now that the 11 second clip also has been released.
- Back to work!

Some more reference and the linear version "done".

Today has been a busy, but effective day. Started work on the final bit on the linear version, again I had some issues to resolve with a hand (as usual) + feet, neck and head.

I struggled A LOT with the juggling part today. It wasn't clear enough, so I had to leave the computer for a while and try and figure out how I could make it easier to understand. I acted it out and decided to do some additional reference for this bit.

Here's the reference footage I took:



What I found is that it was more natural to put the right arm on my back after throwing it. This also shifts the focus on the hand catching and holding the ball in the end. I also liked the little jump I did so I tried my best to include that in my animation.

I managed to work my way through all of the remaining parts and I now have a "finished" linear version. I haven't started any detail work yet, so things like fingers and facial expressions is next. Or, first I have to go through my playblast and write down what I see of mistakes and what I need to adjust or change. But that's tomorrow, been working for nearly 10 hours so I think I need to get some sleep and "attack" it with fresh eyes tomorrow.

Here's the playblast of the linear version: